


Changeling

by allthingsgray



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Memories, Mentions of Han Solo - Freeform, Mentions of Kylo Ren, Origin Story, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 09:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5780917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthingsgray/pseuds/allthingsgray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The desert had another child once, on a different planet. </p><p>Rey dreams of sand and blood and the screams of children and the echoes of a child (a boy then a man) who came from the desert too (sometimes he is her and she is him, she has his face or he has hers).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changeling

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: and now I just want a reincarnated Padme to appear to make a continuation of this because reasons

=

She had another child once. He was colored like She was; hair the color of Her dunes, skin like the rocks of Her plateaus, and eyes like the sky stretched out over Her. 

 

He was the one that came into being with the darkness threading in the outermost reaches of the galaxy, the one She made into being, a little tender thing that would know hardship and misery but would not break beneath these burdens; he would be Her desert-child and She gave him to a young woman. 

 

He was not born free. 

 

He was not an accident, but he was not what She expected. He was like Her. He raged like Her storms, tempestuous and all consuming, a rage that built and built until it formed columns as tall as cities. But he was brave and there was love in him, so, so much love that it burned to look at, whole and beautiful. Until it wasn’t. Until he wasn’t. 

 

And the darkness swallowed the galaxy.

 

She didn’t know better. He was Her First-Born and everything went wrong and She was heartbroken. She hid his son, cloaked in Her winds and sands and She mourned for the boy She made to save the galaxy only for him to destroy it. 

 

But he came back to himself at the end, grasping and flailing at the Light for his son and then -  _ freedom _ . 

 

She took the pieces of him that were left behind once he left this plane, the pieces left behind in the war, the pieces he left behind for his mother and wife, the pieces that stayed with his son. 

 

She wasn’t born with Her, but She made her all the same. She wouldn’t look like him, but she would still look like Her. A child alone in the desert with only a junk-dealer to look after her would not survive. There were slavers, raiders, pirates, desperate people who walked the surface of Her worlds, the desert bred hardened people. But She would watch her, show her, guide her, the way She had for Her boy so long ago. 

 

Rey would learn to fall asleep to the sound of the wind brushing over sand and never fear sandstorms or monsoons. The desert could not kill her. 

  
  
  


 

 

She’d always dreamt of the desert. Jakku, and somewhere else. A distant place that echoes Jakku, or maybe Jakku echoed it but the dunes moved differently, the heat of the sun was different, and the wind howled there where it only groaned on Jakku. 

 

Sometimes she would dream of scavenging an old ship, climbing down the old skeletal structure and the desert around her would change. Twin suns would rise and set, and animals she had never heard before would howl in the distance. A monolith of a black skull would rise in place of any celestial body and it would turn its gaze, wide black pits of nothing, to her, to the stars and then the screaming would start. 

 

She would lose her grip on the ship and fall and everything burned. It felt like she was on fire. She could feel the smoke in her eyes and lungs and every breath was torture. 

 

And she would jackknife up. Breathing in the hot air of her home, or the stale air of the Base, or the plastic-scented air of the shuttle. There would be no ship. No dark creature that threatened to swallow the whole planet. No screaming. 

 

She’d usually need to take a walk or fiddle with something to calm down. 

 

Not all the dreams were fire and darkness and falling though. 

 

In some, she’d be small, just the size of a child and she would have someone’s hand in hers just leading her along. A woman, maybe her mother would smile down at her. She had a wide, kind face with brown hair and sad eyes. She would mouth a name down to her, but Rey could never make out the syllables. There was love in the gaze. Maybe it was less of a dream and more of a memory. Her mother, before she was left on Jakku, what little she could remember of her. It was warm, soft, and a comfort she had never remembered. 

 

Others, there would be exhilaration of flight. Soaring and barrel rolling to the side, speed and daring freedom. Across city skylines, over deserts, over waters, she was ruler of the skies. Indistinct places and shapes, but the feeling of flight was never so fuzzy. It was clear and sharp like fresh water on her tongue. 

 

It brought that feeling to the front when she and Finn escape the troopers on Jakku - she had never imagined she could get that rust heap moving but she proved herself wrong. She made the old girl fly. She made her dance. She had no idea how she had managed it, just grateful that it happened. It was instinctive, a native kind of ease that guided her hand like something clicking into place securely.

 

 

A few times, there would be a terrible heartache that threatened to cleave her chest open to expose her heart, raw and bleeding. A young woman, around her age, dressed in white and beautiful. Rey didn’t know who she was or why she smiled at her the way she did. Rey would feel much taller than her, looking down and she’d feel herself smile back even though she’d mean to ask “ _ Who are you? _ ” But then it would fade and she was left to herself in the dark staring up at her ceiling with tears in her eyes and her heart constricting in her chest. 

 

There were other dreams. 

 

Stormtroopers. Hundreds of them. The sounds of battle - blasterfire and smoke and destruction, battlecries and a snap-hiss of a lightsaber - and there she would be in the middle of it. Her blue lightsaber spun and she felt her body move in a way she would never have been able to pull off - but it felt natural and easy. Over the din of battle, there was one thought that pounded in her over and over and over like a desperate prayer - “ _ Home. I want to go home. _ ” 

 

She would wake up with anger in her throat and a pained grimace on her face. Somehow, in those dreams, she wasn’t sure if her other-self, her dream-self made it home. 

 

When she fought Kylo Ren to the edge of the breaking points of the planet, something echoed in her with a force she had never felt before.  _ You will not win. _ She felt as if she had awoken from a deep sleep and reached down in herself to tug at the origin of the voice that spoke without a sound, and turned the battle on him. 

 

She thinks, in the aftermath of the battle and coming down from the adrenaline high and the anger of seeing Han Solo fall, that if the planet had not chosen that moment to break apart, she may have killed him. 

 

Other things were set in motion, and she wouldn't abandon the Rebels now. They had won a battle, not a war. And she needed a teacher to navigate these strange waters. She set a course for Master Luke and while the shuttle went on autopilot, she dreamed.

  
She was in her home. Her AT-AT on its side like a magnificent fallen animal with her protein bread bubbling nearby and the night sky of a different planet overhead. 


End file.
